Lip, my point is that often times KAT makes an effort where none is needed and it instead is really poor decision that hurts the team. Abe's example is a perfect one. He "hustles" for a follow up putback even though he was way too late and then kills our transition defense as a result. A much smarter play would have been to forgo the long-odds O-board attempt and get back on defense. We see him often over-commit on dribble drive penetration where he leaves his feet and gets way out of position. This almost always results in an easy ally oop or putback dunk by the big he's guarding. Often times staying grounded and walling up is the far better option.
I think KAT is an extremely gifted player on offense, but he makes some really dumb decisions on defense. He's good one-on-one, but put him in PnR or help situations and it gets really dicey with him.
Bulls@Wolves GDT
Re: Bulls@Wolves GDT
Q12543 wrote:Lip, my point is that often times KAT makes an effort where none is needed and it instead is really poor decision that hurts the team. Abe's example is a perfect one. He "hustles" for a follow up putback even though he was way too late and then kills our transition defense as a result. A much smarter play would have been to forgo the long-odds O-board attempt and get back on defense. We see him often over-commit on dribble drive penetration where he leaves his feet and gets way out of position. This almost always results in an easy ally oop or putback dunk by the big he's guarding. Often times staying grounded and walling up is the far better option.
I think KAT is an extremely gifted player on offense, but he makes some really dumb decisions on defense. He's good one-on-one, but put him in PnR or help situations and it gets really dicey with him.
How about some of those dumb passes Towns throws? I mean I think sometimes you need to live with guys looking to make plays but...Towns tends to do too much. It's something he tends to do. Fortunately it's not as maddening as say...DeMarcus Cousins early in his career. Towns still needs refining in his game and that's understandable. He does drive me crazy though sometimes. He did get on the floor in this game and made a nice play there. He tries hard plenty and he seems to be willing to let Covington get a rebound. Lol
Re: Bulls@Wolves GDT
Q12543 wrote:Lip, my point is that often times KAT makes an effort where none is needed and it instead is really poor decision that hurts the team. Abe's example is a perfect one. He "hustles" for a follow up putback even though he was way too late and then kills our transition defense as a result. A much smarter play would have been to forgo the long-odds O-board attempt and get back on defense. We see him often over-commit on dribble drive penetration where he leaves his feet and gets way out of position. This almost always results in an easy ally oop or putback dunk by the big he's guarding. Often times staying grounded and walling up is the far better option.
I think KAT is an extremely gifted player on offense, but he makes some really dumb decisions on defense. He's good one-on-one, but put him in PnR or help situations and it gets really dicey with him.
I get your point, Q, and I agree with it. KAT makes too many poor decisions on defense. My only quibble was with your suggestion that KAT's bad decisions are motivated by his critics. I think his bad decisions flow from his highly competitive nature combined with his immaturity and lack of solid defensive instruction before coming to the NBA. He'll mature as he gets experience. And we've already seen that he's starting to learn how to defend as evidenced by his improved defensive play so far this season. He's already a better defender than Charles Barkley was in his prime and Barkley's in the basketball hall of fame. I'd be worried about KAT if he didn't have a highly competitive nature or failed to show any improvement in his areas of weakness. But he's obviously highly competitive and is showing marked improvement this season defensively and in distributing the ball on the offensive end.
I get the sense that KAT doesn't have a particularly high basketball IQ. But he's not a Gerald Green low IQ type player either. So part of the issue with Towns is that it will take him more time to develop certain areas of his game that he hasn't developed yet. Defending the PnR is a big one for him. Even on the offensive end, he needs to make quicker decisions with the ball, either attacking the basket or passing out of double teams. Again, KAT's competitive nature, desire to be great and trajectory of improvement so far bode well for him. He also needs to stop complaining about every bad call. That's where his immaturity really shows. Someone needs to tell him and keep telling him to knock it off. He should watch RoCo. That guy just goes about his business, raising his hand on a good call and just moving on when he gets a bad call, saving his complaining only for the most egregious calls. KAT has a lot to learn from vets like RoCo, Taj and Derrick Rose.